The following is a summary of an improvement over my prior patents beginning with U.S. Pat. No. 5,659,666, Device for the Autonomous Generation of Useful Information, and its derivative patents: U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,845,271, 5,852,815, 5,852,816, 6,014,653, 6,018,727, 6,115,701, 6,356,884, all of which are incorporated herein by reference. Whereas these original patents utilized pre-trained artificial neural networks in the tandem arrangement shown in FIG. 1, with one network perturbed to generate novel and potentially useful patterns (i.e., ideas or plans of action), while another net served as a critic (with optional feedback to the perturbed net), this fundamental architecture did not possess the ability to learn from its own successes and failures.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to develop an artificial neural network-based system capable of learning from its own successes and failures.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.